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Preface

VERY soon after the publication of the Historia Numorum, now a
quarter of a century ago, I began to realize that for my book, as indeed
for all similar textbooks of progressive science, the old memento mori
held good—

As so one as wee to bee begunne
Wee did beginne to bee undunne.

During all the five-and-twenty years which have elapsed since that
time there has been no interval, pause, or standstill in the steadily
increasing output of numismatic works, all necessitating changes of
some sort in the text of the Historia.

Catalogues of public and private collections, and innumerable special
articles in the periodicals devoted to classical numismatics and archaeology, have all had to be taken into account.

In Great Britain alone no fewer than seventeen volumes (x-xxvi)
have been added to the still unfinished Catalogue of Greek Coins in the
British Museum, while the Hunterian Collection at Glasgow has been
scientifically arranged and described by Dr. G. Macdonald in three stately
quartos (1899-1905).

Hill’s Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins (1899), his Coins of Sicily
(1903), his Historical Greek Coins (1906), and MacDonald’s Coin Types
(1905) are also well illustrated books now in general use, which I have
frequently had to consult.

In France, within the same period, M. Babelon, the learned Conservateur du Cabinet des Médailles in the Bibliothèque Nationale, has brought
out his Rois de Syrie (1890), his Perses Achémenides (1893), his Inventaire de la Collection Waddington (1897), and, in collaboration with
M. Th. Reinach, the first two volumes of the Recueil general des monnaies
grecques d’ Asie mineure (1904-8). He has, moreover, with exemplary courage, undertaken and already made good progress with his voluminous
Traité des monnaies grecques et romaines (1901- ), a great work which he justly calls ‘une tache lourde et de longue haleine’ (adifficult and time consuming task).

In Germany the Beschreibung der antiken Münzen in the Berlin
collection (three vols.), begun in 1888, has, since 1894, fallen into abeyance, but, on the other hand, the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences
has adopted Mommsen’s ideal scheme of a general Corpus of all known
Greek coins, a colossal undertaking, of which, since 1900, it has published
three quarto volumes of the first instalment entitled Die antiken MünzenNordgriechenlands, compiled by H. Gaebler, B. Pick, and K. Regling,
under the general supervision of Dr. Imhoof-Blumer. To the numerous
contributions to the study of Greek coins by this doyen among numismatists I am indebted more than I can adequately express, for without t
his Griechische Münzen (1890) and his Kleinasiatische Münzen (1901-2)
(to mention only his most important recent works) this new edition of
the present work must inevitably have reproduced many an erroneous
attribution or statement which he has enabled me to correct.

To Lehmann for his numerous metrological researches and to
Haeberlin for his remarkable Systematik (1905), and for his Metrologische Grundlagen der ältesten Mittelitalischen Münzsysteme (1909),
my acknowledgments are also due.

I must further express my obligations to M. Svoronos, the Keeper of
the National Numismatic Museum at Athens, and the founder and
indefatigable mainstay of the Journal international d'archéologie
numismatique, not only for the patient labor which he best owed
upon the Historia Numorum in making it available to his compatriots
in a Greek dress and accompanied by an excellent atlas of collotype
plates (1898), but for all the new information which I have been able to
gather from his Numismatique de la Crete ancienne (1890), from his
Νομισματα του κρατους τον Πτολεμαιον (1904-8), and from his many
interesting papers in the Journal International.

For the rest, the accompanying select Bibliography will be sufficient to
give the student some idea of the quantity of new material which I have
had to refer to in the course of the preparation of the present volume.

It is possible that, among those who are familiar only in a general way
with the old edition of this work, there may be some who, on comparing
with it the present revised edition, will, at first sight, be inclined to
think that some portions at any rate of what has been omitted were of
greater interest than what has been added, notwithstanding the fact
that the additions amount in all to no less than 160 pages. The
working student and numismatist, however, will not fail to appreciate
the practical value of the many inconspicuous additions, not only of
new coins but of a great number of new references, chiefly to illustrated
works, while he will hardly, if at all, feel the loss of a certain amount of
matter, doubtless readable enough, but either superfluous or εξο του
πραγματος, which has been sacrificed to avoid the necessity of splitting
the book into two volumes, a course which would not only have detracted
from its convenience as a manual, but would also have added not a little
to its cost.

The publication, since 1887, of such a large number of very fully
illustrated numismatic catalogues, independent works, and monographs,
to which I have been able to add references, has rendered it possible to
curtail much descriptive matter, while at the same time it has made it
unnecessary to add to the number of cuts in the text, which latter in deed
are intended to serve only as reminiscences of some of the more remarkable specimens.

Had so vast an accumulation of numismatic literature, both popular
and scientific, been accessible in 1883, when I began the compilation
of the original work (though even then it was very considerable), I doubt
whether I should have had the courage to face the task single-handed,
and most assuredly when, some years ago, a new edition was called for,
I should have felt incapable of undertaking to complete it, especially
after my retirement from the British Museum in 1906, had not some of
my friends and late colleagues generously offered to come to my assistance in revising and bringing up to date each a section of the work with
which he was most familiar.

Dr. George Maonald has rewritten the sections dealing with the
coins of the Seleucidae, the Ptolemies, and Egypt under the Romans.

To Prof. E. J. Rapson also I am beholden for revising the descriptions
of the Bactrian and Graeco-Indian coins, and for preparing a new Plate of
the forms and values of the characters of the Kharoṣṭhī alphabet; and
lastly, I have to thank Prof. R. S. Conway for making corrections in the
Plate of the Italic alphabets.

Messrs. Hill, Maonald, and Wroth have also read the proof-sheets of
the entire volume.

From the Preface to the First Edition

IN few departments of historical research has more advance been
made within the last half-century than in Greek Numismatics, and in
none perhaps is it more difficult for the student to gain access to
the papers, scattered up and down the pages of the publications of learned
societies, which deal with the subject. The time is fast approaching
when Greek Archaeology and Numismatics will take their due place, too
long denied them, in the curriculum of study at our English and American
Universities. It has therefore become incumbent upon the few, who in
this and other countries hold the key of knowledge, to pause for an
interval to take stock of their possessions, to count their gains and
arrange and classify the mass of new material which has been accumulated in years of patient enquiry, to eliminate the ore from the dross, of
which there is no small quantity, and to piece together for the benefit of
younger students the scattered fragments of truth which their predecessors and contemporaries have been at the pains of collecting.

The last thorough retrospect of the science with which we are now
called upon to deal was Eckhel’s monumental workDoctrina Numorum
veterum, published at Vienna during the closing years of the last century,
a marvelous compendium of wide research and profound erudition, a work
which can never be altogether superseded, and which the Numismatist
may always consult with advantage for the first principles of the science
of his predilection. But since Eckhel’s time much has been accomplished;
whole fields of study of which Eckhel was entirely ignorant have
been opened up and explored, and hoards upon hoards of ancient coin s
have been brought to light, such for instance as the electrum staters of
Cyzicus, of which at the present time no fewer than 150 varieties are
known, though not one single specimen had ever come under Eckhel's
observation, a circumstance which led him to doubt the evidence of the
ancient writers and seriously to dispute the fact that such coins had ever
existed (Prolegomena, p. 42). Other series such as those of Elis and of
Corinth, although known to Eckhel, were wrongly attributed by him,
the former to Falerii in Etruria, the latter to Syracuse. Eckhel
again had never seen a gold stater of Athens, and disbelieved in the
genuineness of the few specimens which had been described by others.
Hence the following statement, startling as it now appears in the light
of our fuller knowledge, concerning the coinage of Cyzicus, Phocaea,
Corinth, and Athens, was by Eckhel’s disciples accepted as the final decision of the master:—‘At ne horum quidem populorum vel unus repertus
est aureus et Corinthiorum quidem nullum omnino habemus numum
certum ex quocunque metallo antequam romanam coloniam recepissent.’

Passing from Greece to the East, we find Eckhel’s work all but
useless to the student. The Lycian, the Cypriote, the Arian and Indian
Pali alphabets and syllabaries were absolutely unknown in Eckhel's
time. All these and many other series of coins, some now thoroughly,
and others as yet but partially investigated, were, in the beginning of
the present century still silent witnesses to the history of a dead past,
lying undiscovered, though fortunately uninjured by the lapse of ages
in the safe keeping of that mother-earth to whom they had been committed more than two thousand years ago.

I have still to mention two very important subjects concerning which
the author of the Doctrina was very imperfectly acquainted: (i) The history
of the development of Greek art, and (ii) Metrology. With regard to the
first it is only indeed within quite recent years that archaeologists have
been aware of any strict scientific basis of criticism for determining the
exact age of works of ancient art. Archaeology as a science can hardly
be said to have existed in the last century. There was little or nothing
in the nature of things which precluded the possibility of assigning almost
any uninscribed coin, within certain limits, to almost any age. All this
is now changed, and we may approach the study of Greek Numismatics
armed with at least a general knowledge of the laws which hold good in
the growth, the development, and the decay of Greek art. Numismatics
and Epigraphy have been of immense assistance in determining these
fixed laws of criticism, and it is now a matter of no great difficulty for
the experienced numismatist to place a coin within certain definite
temporal and local limits often surprisingly narrow. It is thus possible
with a tolerably complete series of the coins of anyone city at our disposal to arrange them in the order in which they were issued, and so to
reconstruct the numismatic history of the town. How much light may
be thrown upon the dark spaces of political history by a series of coins
classified and duly arranged in order of date can only be fully appreciated
by those who are familiar with the science of numismatics and accustomed to handle and study minutely the money of the ancients.

One of the distinctive features of the present work is an attempt to set
forth clearly the chronological sequence of the various series, and thus to
build up in outline the history of the ancient world as it existed from the
seventh century before our era down to the closing years of the third
century A.D., a space of nearly a thousand years. If in some districts this
historical outline is of the barest and most. fragmentary kind, it will
generally be found that this is due to the absence of numismatic evidence.
Wherever coins are at hand in any quantities, there we have authentic documents on which to work. However rash therefore and tentative
some of my chronological hypotheses may be thought to be by more
cautious numismatists, I have preferred to submit such judgments as I
may perhaps sometimes too hastily have formed to the criticism of all
who are competent to give an opinion on these matters rather than to
shield my ignorance under the convenient cloak of silence. I shall be
only too glad if any errors into which I may have fallen may serve to
call forth discussion and so to elicit the full truth.

Next, as regards Metrology, Eckhel was perfectly justified in refusing
to discuss the subject in detail in his great work. Much, it is true, had
been written about the weights of ancient coins before Eckhel’s time, but
scarcely anything of solid and permanent value. ‘Fatendum est etiam,’ he
says (Prolegomena, p. 34), ‘multa esse adhuc in hac causa dubia atque
incerta, multa Cimmeriis adhuc noctibus involuta, quod satis ex eruditorum litibus atque dissidiis apparet.’ The true reason why it was not possible at that time to draw any inferences from the weights of Greek
coins was also duly appreciated by Eckhel, who however does not seem
to have anticipated that this then valid reason would not always apply.
So long as it was impossible to assign definite dates to the various issues
of cities of the ancient world, so long were all metrological theories vague
and worthless; as he most justly remarks, ‘arduam tamen is sibi provinciam imponet qui volet monetae argenteae, v. g. Syracusanorum, pondere
mirum differentis certam secum rationem reperire. Tempora, inquies,
esse distinguenda, atque aliis aliud pondus adsignandum. At enim quis
noverit haec apte tempora distinguere?’ Not Eckhel himself, much less the
metrological writers of his own and the preceding century. Now however
this is happily no longer the case, and the metrologists of the nineteenth
century, Boeckh 1838, Queipo 1859, Mommsen 1865, Brandis 1866,
Lenormant 1878, Bortolotti 1878, and Hultsch 1864 and 1882, have, in
the light of their fuller knowledge of the exact dates of the coins on which
their theories are based, placed the science of ancient numismatic metrology at last on a firm footing. It can no longer be maintained that this
branch of our subject is shrouded in ‘Cimmerian darkness’; the night
has at last broken and we are beginning to see well enough to feel our way.
It is true that much still remains to be done, and all is not quite clear,
and it is doubtless possible that before many years have passed those
portions of the present work which deal with the origin and extension of
the various systems of weight will need careful revision or may have to
be entirely re-written. I am quite ready to admit that many of my
opinions are hypothetical, and that some of my inferences may be based
upon insufficient data. Further discoveries may confirm or modify my
views on many points which are now obscure. My introductory chapters
on metrology will perhaps be accepted as they are intended, merely as
plausible theories. This portion of my Manual may therefore be passed
over by those who look only for facts, of which I trust a sufficient abundance will be found in the body of the work.

One word more with regard to the scope and intention of the present
Manual. In the first place it lays no claim to be a complete‘Corpus' of
Greek coins. The time has not yet arrived for such a colossal undertaking, nor will it, I fear, ever be possible for a single student, by his own
unaided efforts, to compile such a work. When the great Catalogue of
the Greek coins in the British Museum is completed, and when the French
and German Museums have followed the example set by England and
have published full catalogues of all their coins, then and not till then
will the task be feasible, if competent scholars can be induced to undertake it. Meanwhile Mionnet’s voluminous work in fifteen volumes,
Description de Médailles antiques grecques et romanies, Paris, 1807-1837,
will, in spite of its many inaccuracies, continue to hold the field as, longo
intervallo, the nearest approach to a complete if not to a scientific Corpus.

In the second place this Manual is not a general treatise or series of
essays like Lenormant’s valuable and suggestive, though alas! unfinished,
work, La Monnaie dans l'Antiquité, Paris, 1878-9, 3 vols.

My aim has been to produce a practical handbook in a single portable
volume containing in a condensed form a sketch of the numismatic history
of nearly every city, king, or dynast, known to have struck coins
throughout the length and breadth of the ancient world. I do not
attempt to provide a complete catalogue of all the known coins of any
city, nor even to describe in minute detail the specimens which I have
found space to mention. Either course would have involved the addition
of at least a second volume, and the scope and object of the work would
not have been the same. All that I have found it possible to accomplish
in a Manual of moderate size has been to draw attention to the leading
and most characteristic coin-types of each city and king, as far as possible
in chronological order, taking care to distinguish the dialectic forms of
the ethnic noun or adjective, to note the metrological standards in use in
the various periods, the local myths, and the names and epithets of the
deities chiefly revered in each locality, and to indicate remarkable palaeo-graphical peculiarities, in so far as this could be done without having
special types cut for the purpose, which would have necessitated a large
addition to the price of the volume. In the Imperial period I have
endeavored to give the titles, though not the names, of all the local
magistrates, and the names of the chief religious festivals and public
games, and I have also been careful to note the local eras wherever the
coins bear dates.

The vexed question of the best mode of spelling Greek names I have
not attempted to solve. Any system carried out with undeviating consistency can hardly fail to lead to unsatisfactory or pedantic and sometimes even to absurd results. I have therefore preferred to be a little
inconsistent, but have adhered as much as possible to the following rule.
For all names of cities, kings, and dynasts, I have chosen the Latin
spelling, as the Greek would have involved an alphabetical arrangement
different from that which has been generally adopted in numismatic works
and in the coin-cabinets of all the great museums of Europe. The names
of the Greek divinities, heroes, and other mythological personages, on the
other hand, I have kept approximately in their original Greek forms, as
Zeus, Kybele, Odysseus, instead of Jupiter, Cybele, Ulysses, but I have
never ventured upon such ugly and unnecessary transliterations as
Odysseus or Akhilleus.

For the rest, I commit my book to the kindly judgment of numismatists, not without much misgiving and an inward consciousness of its
many shortcomings and of the countless errors which in spite of all my
strivings after accuracy of detail cannot fail to have crept into its pages.